


Guilty Pleasures

by kaeorin



Series: Loki's Lullabies [143]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Caretaking, Comfort, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Guilty Pleasures, M/M, POV Loki (Marvel), Protective Loki (Marvel), Reader-Insert, Sick Character, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:14:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25927216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin
Summary: Loki always took a guilty sort of pleasure in your ‘sick days’.
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Reader
Series: Loki's Lullabies [143]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678240
Comments: 10
Kudos: 154





	Guilty Pleasures

**Author's Note:**

> I promise to do my best not to make the next few Lullabies sick!fics but maybe I’m trying to build up a little collection that I can come to back to when I’m teaching again and feeling like crap. I certainly don’t wish general colds or headaches upon any of you, but when it does inevitably come for you, I hope you’re able to remember these stories that I wrote for you.

Now. Loki didn’t enjoy it when you weren’t feeling well. Of course he didn’t. On any given day, he longed to see you at your best, with eyes that sparkled with sheer joy for life and excitement to see the world. He loved speaking with you. Even after all this time, your mind could still be such a mystery to him. You could still surprise him with the things you came up with, the bright embers of wit that burned within you. And he loved to watch you work, even though it did mean that you weren’t paying attention to him at all. He liked the crease of your brow as you focused on whatever it was that you were doing on your computer, the way your eyes would narrow, the way your fingers flew across the keyboard. 

You had been holding up admirably well in these last few months, even with the uncertainty and the fear that crept through Midgard. You did what you had to do, and you only very seldom breathed a word of complaint. But lately, it seemed that the pressure was starting to get to you. He couldn’t blame you. You still watched the news too much, not even taking into account the amount of news you read online, and he had to imagine that it was difficult to know that this country was doing so poorly when nearly every other country in the world had already dealt with most of the issues. You had family and loved ones halfway around the world that you’d spent all this time so concerned about, and now they were doing well, while you were still stuck in the mire.

The headaches came first. You kept quiet about them most of the time, but he came to recognize the sound of the bottle of painkillers that you kept in the bathroom. Some days, you were more quiet than usual, and he couldn’t miss the pain in your eyes even as you smiled at him. He found yet another reason to be surprised by you. He did not often feel the drive to help others. Growing up, it was safe to say that he’d never felt such a thing. But when he came here, when he met you, it started to become more normal for him. It was difficult to make himself care much for Midgardians as a whole, even now, but he wanted to take care of _you_.

So it didn’t matter that you didn’t come to him when you were hurting. Any time he heard that bottle of pills, or any time he saw you slumping over your computer, he found ways to help. Sometimes he took over for you when it was your turn to make dinner. You didn’t like that at all, but, he discovered, often your discomfort was enough to keep you from fighting him all that hard. On the worst days, when you closed your computer early and hid yourself in the darkened bedroom, he joined you. He stroked your face, your scalp, your shoulders. He relished the quiet noises you made. The breathy moans. The delicate whimpers. On normal days, on good days, he never spent much time thinking of you as particularly fragile, but when you felt less than your best, it was hard to ignore. Human bodies were, relatively speaking, so frail, and still you trusted him with yours. He made sure to reward you to the best of his ability with tender caresses and as many whispered incantations as he could remember.

He came to appreciate your worst days, in a guilty way. On mornings when you woke up feeling unwell, whether it was because of physical reasons or mental ones, you tended to crawl back into bed shortly after forcing yourself to get up and get ready for the day. You’d wash up and perhaps even go into the kitchen to brew some coffee, but then you invariably came back into the bedroom. Sometime he’d watch you through half-lidded eyes as you pulled out some of your “comfortable clothes” and his heart would surge in his chest. Then you’d crawl back into bed, often positioning yourself so that you could hide your face against his neck and breathe him in.

He liked holding you in bed. If you let him, if you stuck around in the mornings, he could do it for hours. But, all too often, you forced yourself to get up before either of you was truly ready for it. So when you came back to him in the mornings, even though he knew it meant you weren’t feeling well, he treasured it. You came to him for comfort. In your weakest moments, when you were not feeling like yourself, you sought him out instead of hiding yourself away from him. That realization echoed through his brain with each of your soft breaths against his skin. Even when he lost himself in the past and held you too tight in the present, you didn’t fight to get away from him. You’d just whine so softly, and squirm a little in his arms until he came back to you and loosened his grip. The first few times it happened, he’d heard himself apologize to you—Loki, _apologizing_ —but you’d only given him a quiet laugh and rubbed your cheek against him. You forgave him so easily. It made him want to deserve it.

As much as he liked to take in the sight of you hard at work, he couldn’t ignore the thrill that ran through him when you mumbled about taking a sick day. When you felt bad enough to take a break from work, you often allowed yourself to get so preciously clingy. He loved touching you. He loved holding you. He loved kissing your temple and murmuring things against the side of your head. There was a magic in your body, and it called to him at all times. On days that you were well, he found himself uncharacteristically afraid of overcrowding you, of suffocating you. He’d just never felt anything like this for anyone before, and he didn’t want to drive you off. But when you came to him of your own free well and fit yourself against him, it felt like he was allowed to enjoy every inch of you.

This afternoon, you were dozing with your head on his shoulder. He had a book in his lap, but he hadn’t truly been trying to read since the moment he heard you start to fall asleep. It was still a little strange, how entrancing you were to him. Just listening to the sound of your breathing could occupy him for far too long. Every once in a while, he would turn his head to kiss your forehead, and each time he did, you rewarded him with the sweetest sigh. 

When he was younger, this would have been so unthinkable to him. Being penned into a Midgardian home with a human would have sounded like foul torture to the man he used to be. He’d hungered so desperately for glory and conquest and power. But even now, because of your influence on him no doubt, he could not look back on his younger self with irritation or derision, only with disbelief. And a bit of pity. Every time he shared some new part of himself with you, that was how you responded. Even when, shame-faced, he admitted how he’d ridiculed Thor for his time with Jane Foster, you did not pull away from him. You spoke of his past self, his younger self, with love. _He was so lonely_ , you would say in a soft voice. _You poor thing, you’ve been so lonely…_

But he was not lonely with you. Not ever. 

You shifted beside him and tightened your arm around his waist. When you sighed, he could have sworn that he heard you murmur his name. You did that, sometimes. You talked in your sleep when you weren’t feeling well: mostly nonsense, but sometimes his name, and rough declarations of love. He was still adjusting to that. He was still coming to accept that he could be worthy of that. But with someone like you offering that love so resolutely, without faltering or showing any signs of doubt, it was slowly becoming easier to accept.

Today, you weren’t feeling well. Loki did what he could to look after you and to make you well again and to soak in this side of you with as little guilt as possible. Because tomorrow you would be well again, and bright and sharp as ever, and he would take even more pleasure in your presence then. But for now you were curled against him and snoring softly.

And he loved you so, so dearly.


End file.
